


a certain clarity

by Amlovelies



Series: Chargestep Prompt Pieces [5]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Blood, Canon Typical Violence, F/F, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Pre-Canon, Realizations, Working through feelings, light retribution spoilers, nanosurge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29036658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amlovelies/pseuds/Amlovelies
Summary: Julia's reflections after nearly dying during the nanosurge
Relationships: Julia Ortega/Sidestep
Series: Chargestep Prompt Pieces [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2133453
Kudos: 7





	a certain clarity

**Author's Note:**

> written as a prompt fill over on tumblr

It was strange, the bubble of calm that seem to envelope them even as the crowd around pulses with frantic energy. Shouts and the cries of the injured ring out around them. Reporters scream out questions to every passer-by, microphones pushed out as far possible. They’re almost falling over the hastily erected barriers in their desperation for information, for story. As Marshal, she will have to face them soon, but not just yet.

It isn’t that Ortega is hiding from her responsibilities, in fact she is disobeying the medics orders by staying. They had tried to hurry her off to an ambulance, so worried about the gash of missing skin on her arm, but there were still people caught in the rubble, people who needed more help than she did. Gauze and antiseptic would have to do for now. It could have been so much worse.

Ortega had been sure she was going to die. She’d faced death many times in her life, but she’d never been as sure as when she felt the sting of the nanovores devouring the flesh of her arm. She was going to die, and it was going to be a long, painful death. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

Until there had been. Ortega looks down to where Sidestep’s head lies in her lap. Her breathing is slow and even in sleep. She wishes she could remove the mask so she could run her fingers through Cynthia’s brown curls like her mother used to do when she was a child and feeling sick, but anonymity is more important to Cynthia than any comfort Ortega’s hand’s can provide.

It’s not the first time that Sidestep has saved her life, maybe not even the tenth, but this, this felt different. Perhaps it was the “no” that tore out of Sidestep as the nanovores attached themselves to Ortega’s skin. The desperation, the desperation that gave her the strength to stop them. Sidestep has saved them all.

After the containment team had arrived, after they had cleared the field and Sidestep was finally able to relax, Chen, with his accusatory gaze and his questions, asked how she’d managed it.

“I don’t know. I just … I just had to.”

They’d been dancing around each other for months now. Cynthia always refusing Ortega’s attempts to take her out, but still succumbing to stolen moments of lips and bodies pressed against each other. No more than kissing, it never went further, and Ortega didn’t press, still unsure of her own feelings.

Except she hadn’t been unsure today. Not when the nanovores spelled her own doom. Behind the pain and the fear there was one thought, “I should tell her.”

Then Sidestep had saved them all, and the words wouldn’t come. Ortega can feel the moment, the clarity that death’s specter had provided, slipping away.

Even knowing, or maybe because, she will not hear, she whispers, “I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @amlovelies  
> thank you for reading 💕


End file.
